The District CE continues its Year of Reading legacy!

The District CE School in St Helens is continuing its Year of Reading initiative by engaging the local community in a new project, the #DistrictBookDrop.

The primary school, which won the Innovative and Creative Literacy Award at last year’s Educate Awards has created the ‘District Book Drop’ and ‘Free Book Friday’ to share its love of reading in their local community.

The school was inspired by artist duo Yellow Door Artists, who drop off free art for people to find and treasure, and reading project ‘Books Underground’, which promotes the sharing of books on the London Underground.

Every Friday, the school hides a free book in the local area and tweets clues on where to find it. Parents, pupils and the community then hunt down the ‘hidden treasure’ which can be anything from Louis’ Sachar’s Fuzzy Mud to Cathy Cassidy’s Coco Caramel.

Inside each book, the school adds a QR code that links to one of its pupil’s book reviews on the school blog. Instead of simply finding and reading the book, the school hope the lucky finders will comment back and share their own review.

A month in to the project and the school say there is already a ‘great buzz and excitement’, which it hopes to build on leading up to World Book Day on 3 March.

This is one of many initiatives the school takes part in. Earlier this year, it unveiled its new reading garden, a place to share stories and be inspired. The garden includes a story shack, tepee seating area, CBeebies story window and signposts pointing to famous story settings.

Can you untangle the clues and grab yourself a free book? Follow The District CE on Twitter to be in with a chance